The
young UCF Knights lead by true freshman B.J. Taylor, came out
fighting hard in the first half and lead the game 26-25 at the half.
The second half started without a score for The Knights until the
6:29 mark. FAU never looked back and held on to win the game 54-41.
The knights only shot 26% in the game with FAU only better at 35%.
Taylor with 11 points in the first half and only 6 in the second is a
young man that has a huge task to lead a team as young and
problematic as The Knights.

The
Knights coming off there first road trip of the season with losses at
FSU, UIC and now FAU at home have a huge hill to climb with
conference play starting in two weeks time.

UCF
has one of toughest conferences in division one basketball, with the
defending national champions Connecticut, Memphis, Cincinnati and
coach Larry Brown's SMU. With second half meltdowns we have seen from
this team, it will not be an easy season to watch without mountains
of progress.

The
Knights are a young talented team that need the guidance of head
coach Donnie Jones more than ever. Coach Jones said in the post game
press conference: “I'm
not going to sit here and make excuses. We lost. It doesn't matter.
We had to play. We have young guys and obviously young guys have got
to grow up. We don't have a lot of depth. We tried to play some guys,
but we couldn't get in rhythm tonight, in sync. I felt we still don't
know how to handle it when it doesn't go our way. That's our youth.
We don't have a true leader yet. There are some young guys who are
trying to learn to do that. That's my job to continue to coach them.
They've got to go through it. Unfortunately tonight it's a tough one,
when you're having a hard time getting it going.”

B.J.
Taylor added: "We have to go right back to work. Right
back to work tomorrow. Get into practice. Can't keep dwelling on the
negative, got to remain positive and keep working, keep grinding
every day. It's not going to get easier just pouting, sitting around
crying about it. We've got to get back in practice, work harder and
get ready for the next game." "I'm trying to be a leader on
the team. We have to have 15 leaders though. Everybody has to be
dedicated. Everybody has to be committed. If we don't have guys
committed, then we won't succeed. Everybody has to be a leader
themselves."

The young team has
a chance to right the ship Wednesday night at the CFE arena against
Detroit. The game tips off at 7:30 and can be seen on ESPN3 and heard
on AM 740 The Game.